Claudia Finkbeiner

Self-regulated cooperative EFL reading tasks: students’ strategy use and teachers’ support

The ADEQUA research project has gained empirical evidence on how the situationally adequate use of learning strategies can be facilitated during cooperative reading tasks in the EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom. Two video studies were conducted with ninth-grade EFL learners in German schools: the first (laboratory) study investigated the students’ use of strategies while working in dyads and without teacher support on a given task. The second study, a field study, focused on teachers’ actions to support their students while working on a series of tasks in their regular classrooms. In this paper, we present the findings from a specific subsample of students (n = 30 from the first study and n = 228 from the second one), focusing on (1) the extent to which the students employed specific strategies adequately and successfully, and (2) the types of support actions taken by the teachers and to what extent these actions facilitated the students’ strategy use. The microanalytic approach adopted here allows us to identify those strategies which especially appear to require a teachers support in order to be employed more adequately and successfully. Furthermore, by distinguishing between teachers’ support actions which are more versus less conducive to self-regulation and facilitating students’ strategy use, we are able to provide recommendations on how to fine-tune teachers’ assistance.

One and All in CALL? Learner–Moderator–Researcher

In this article I will present the results of a research project on CALL and on cooperative learning in CALL, conducted as a democratic joint venture between teachers and students in the university setting over the last couple of years. The project consists of several sub-studies, all of which deal with the three-folded perspective I consider as most crucial for 21st century students: learning, moderating, doing research. This is particularly true for those students who have decided and who are willing to commit themselves into the endeavor of a life-long and never-ending learning and training process in order to, in the near future, become and, in the more distant future, be a ‘good’ teacher. I believe that CALL will be one of the most important factors in that scenario that I will describe for schools set for the 21st century. In order to familiarize the reader with our teaching philosophy and beliefs, and to make clear what I consider a ‘good’ teaching and learning scenario, I will first show how the goal of teacher professionalization can be implemented into a university foreign language teacher training program. This can be done with strong reference to the ideas incorporated into a CALL model as well as a 21st century teacher competencies model. Both models can be regarded as ‘mergers’ implemented into the LMR-plus-Model of Foreign Language Teaching to the benefit of their users. In a second step I will describe the experiences made and data collected in the past few years in the CALL and LMR-plus field. The data presented here are part of a large in-process study based on the paradigms of action research. The project consists of several sub studies. The data are both of a quantitative and qualitative kind. Data will be quoted with reference to different kinds of populations. The study was conducted in a seminar on CALL (in-group) at the University of Kassel in summer 2000 and parallel to this outside the CALL classroom (out-group). In the course of the semester, I conducted a survey among the seminars participants, focusing specifically on the impact of the LMR-plus triangle in combination with computer skills and experiences. The model regards each participant of the CALL-classroom, as well as any other classroom, as one and all: learner, moderator, researcher. This in turn supports the idea of life-long learning, which of course represents a substantial necessity of CALL, since technological development surely has not reached its peak yet. Consequently, the goals of the survey are to find out: • about the students prior experiences, prior knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and interest as far as CALL and the LMR-plus model are concerned; • whether CALL can contribute to a change in students’ computer skills; • whether CALL conducted in a setting following the LMR-plus model can contribute to an awareness of the different roles the term professionalization implies; • if the established competencies raise students urgent wish to put the LMR-plus model’s theory into practice in their present and future life as teachers.

Effects of the Adequacy of Learning Strategies in Self-Regulated Learning Settings: A Video-Based Microanalytical Lab Study

So far, the quality of learning strategies has been considered primarily within the framework of the “description paradigm” by investigating the relationship between the use frequency of macrostrategies and achievement. The ADEQUA study is approaching the quality of learning strategic actions in a more finely grained fashion by rating the adequacy of discrete learning strategies at the microanalytical level. Specifically, the study scrutinizes the strategies used by secondary-level students of English as a foreign language while reading an English text in a self-regulated, cooperative learning environment. The strategies they used in overcoming comprehension difficulties were identified and rated on the basis of the students’ videotaped task performance as well as a stimulated recall procedure. In regression models, the adequacy of strategic actions is of major predictive power with considerable effect sizes for students’ achievement. The hypothesis-testing approach adopted here (i.e., to assess the adequacy of every discrete strategy used by means of highly inferential ratings), appears to be promising.

Foreign language learning and teaching in Germany: A review of empirical research literature from 2005 to 2010

This article reviews the empirical research literature on foreign language (FL) learning and teaching published between 2005 and 2010 in Germany. It focuses on the empirical studies that have attracted the greatest interest among researchers during this period of time. These include research on educational standards, teacher education, early FL learning, content and language integrated learning, motivation and interest, intercultural learning, literacy, learning strategies and cooperative and computer-assisted language learning. The review reveals rich and diverse research studies in the field of FL teaching and learning. As a relatively young discipline without a longstanding research tradition, this field overlaps in its research interests and methods with other research fields such as educational psychology, linguistics and the educational sciences. The review also shows that the research into FL teaching and learning is to a large degree dominated by small rather than large-scale projects and is characterized by its largely practical relevance. The review ends with recommendations for future research as a conditio sine qua non for further development in the field.

Developing prospective teachers’ diagnostic skills through collaborative video analysis: focus on L2 reading

ABSTRACT This paper contains a collaborative video-based approach to foster prospective teachers’ diagnostic skills with respect to pupils’ L2 reading processes. Together with a peer, the prospective teachers watched, systematically selected, analysed and commented on clips from a comprehensive video corpus on L2 reading strategies. In order to assist the prospective teachers in this demanding process, a Standardised Clip Protocol (SCP) was developed and tutorial support was provided. The SCPs were subjected to various empirical procedures. Quantitatively, the frequency of all learning challenges mentioned by the prospective teachers was counted. Qualitatively, the nature of the diverse reading challenges identified by the prospective teachers was investigated. In that respect, a focus was put on the prospective teachers’ diagnostic findings regarding pupils’ lexical and conceptual awareness. The results indicate that the skills to notice and diagnose L2 learners’ lexical and conceptual reading challenges form an essential part of Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) and should be integrated into teacher education programmes.

Panel discussion: language awareness vs. folk linguistics vs. applied linguistics

As already mentioned in our introduction, the disciplinary status of Language Awareness (research), especially its relationship to other subfields of (Applied) Linguistics or also nonlinguistic disciplines still seems rather vague. Even if disciplines never reach a definitive, crystallised, final status, and there is and has to be a perpetual dynamic in the social construction of the system of sciences and disciplines, a ‘meta-disciplinary’ discourse remains important for every (potential) discipline and its identity. In the previous conference special issue, Agneta Svalberg published an important overview ‘Language Awareness research: where we are now’ (Svalberg, 2016), where she presented the most prominent LA topics and most frequently used research methods in the contributions of this journal in the years 2010 – 2014. Her analysis and considerations concern however rather internal aspects of LA research and not disciplinary issues. As in the last years I have been personally involved not only in the LA, but also in the Folk Linguistics community (co-convening with Antje Wilton the AILA Research Network ‘Folk Linguistics’; cf. Wilton & Stegu, 2011; AILA = Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliqu ee), I have been increasingly interested in the mutual relationship between Language Awareness, Folk Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. Therefore, I decided to organise at the Vienna conference a forum of experts from the different communities who would discuss the disciplinary issues mentioned above. The participants in this discussion were: Claire Kramsch, the (in the meantime: past) president of AILA, Dennis Preston, one of the most prominent researchers in ‘Folk Linguistics’ (cf. Niedzielski & Preston, 2000), Antje Wilton (see above) and myself, as moderator. Unfortunately, for reasons of time, Claire Kramsch was not able to compose a written version of her contribution, but we got texts from all the other participants. The oral and written versions were both reactions to an input text I had sent the participants before the conference, and at the beginning of the panel, as an introduction, I read the same text to the audience in order to present my questions. I will also copy the original text here before inserting the discussants’ statements. At the end of these statements, I will sum up with a provisional conclusion. LANGUAGE AWARENESS, 2018 VOL. 27, NOS. 1–2, 186–196 https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2018.1434921